


Happiness Is A Warm Throat

by PunishedPyotr



Series: Only Ones and Zeros [11]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Decapitation, Fluff, M/M, Mild D/s, Necrophilia, Somnophilia, anatomically accurate, due to the nature of this series it's technically both, reupload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 20:31:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13842465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunishedPyotr/pseuds/PunishedPyotr
Summary: Liquid has the mostridiculouskinks he can engage in now that all this is technically just a computer simulation. Mostly Mantis just can't believe he lets himself get talked into these things...





	Happiness Is A Warm Throat

**Author's Note:**

> Entropy: The gradual decline of a system into chaos.  
> Aireytropy: The gradual decline of a fanwork series into porn.
> 
> I told myself I wasn't going to :(

Considering Liquid really has nothing _better_ to do than pick fights with the simulated Gurlukovich soldiers, or Gray Fox since he’s evidently a more worthy opponent, Mantis gradually grew used to occasionally coming back to the Shadow Moses VR just to find Liquid in various states of bullet-riddled, disemboweled, and/or dismembered. _Usually_ he’s ‘dead’ and dreaming - usually peacefully — sometimes he isn’t, and makes little pained whines at Mantis until Mantis goes into his code and resets his injury variables for the hundredth time. (By now, he’s got the locations of the variables he needs memorized, and doesn’t need to grope around Liquid’s code to find them… but Liquid likes the groping, so Mantis is typically just a little intentionally meandering.)

Today he’s been decapitated. This is actually the first time Mantis has seen it since that time with the helicopter, but he takes it in stride despite the very deep, instinctual distress he _still_ feels whenever he sees Liquid’s corpse. After so many months of coming back to this mess, he’s learned to ignore that. He picks up Liquid’s head.

“You’re getting careless, Eli.”

Dream Liquid is on a white-sanded beach somewhere with a mai tai, and for some reason it’s nighttime and the water is a bright reddish-orange but the part of Liquid’s mind that would remotely question that is, of course, not terribly functional during a dream. (Although it _is_ functional, unlike in life. Mantis supposes it has something to do with the fact that Liquid isn’t in a physical state of sleep per se, and no longer has a prefrontal cortex to shut down. The point is that he’s often a little loopy and too quick to accept nonsense but otherwise is as reasonable as he ever is.)

Liquid waves him over. “Isn’t this nice?” he says.

“A far cry from Shadow Moses.”

“It’s _warm_ here, I like it. Did you come to wake me up?”

“Unfortunately. I am currently holding your severed head in my hands.”

Outside of the dream - and it’s always hard to concentrate on essentially being in two places at once - Mantis turns Liquid’s head over, examining the stump of his neck.

“It’s fascinating, really,” he says.

“Oh?” Liquid says, taking a sip of his dream mai tai, “describe it for me…?”

“It was such a clean cut… it is almost exactly like something out of an anatomical textbook. I think I can remember all the names…”

“Let me see, let me see,” Liquid chirps, standing up. “I want to see!”

As said: a little loopy. But Mantis decides to indulge him for a few minutes before performing a soft reset and waking him up. He intentionally grabs hold of Liquid’s dream and shifts it so that now Liquid is essentially dreaming of being Mantis - looking through his eyes, down at his own decapitated head upside-down in Mantis’ hands.

For Mantis, it’s a bit like double vision except without the blurry, offset overlapping, and the effect is disorienting but not so much so that he can’t ignore it.

 _I bet it would be easier to see without so much blood_ , he hears Liquid say thoughtfully, _but that’s part of what makes it so interesting, isn’t it?_

“Mm.” Mantis runs his hand over the sliced anatomy of Liquid’s neck. He came back to Shadow Moses a couple hours after Liquid had lost to Gray Fox, so the blood is more or less dried and rigor mortis has already set in, although that’s not relevant right now. Decomposition doesn’t progress very far here: it goes through pallor, algor, and rigor mortis, but it never reaches livor mortis or anything after that.

_So…?_

“Well,” Mantis said, “this larger tube is your trachea, and this smaller one is your esophagus. Actually, I suppose it is not really the _smaller_ one, since it has to stretch to accommodate swallowing and such. And… this is part of your spine.”

 _My cervical vertebrae_ , Liquid says.

Mantis lets out an irritated snort. “If you know this better than I, Eli,” he says, “then feel free to enlighten me.”

_Oh… er, of course! I think I remember…_

He moves his fingers over to a pair of blood vessels right by the esophagus. “These, then?”

_One of them— one of them is the carotid artery, and one of them is the jugular vein!_

“Yes, but which is which?”

_Ah… hmm…_

Clearly he doesn’t know, but to be fair Mantis isn’t sure either. He does know that the blood vessel just under the skin has got to be his external jugular vein, though. Either way he brushes his hand over something fleshy surrounding part of the trachea that he genuinely does not know what it is.

 _That’s my thyroid gland_ , Liquid supplies, _I’m not sure what it does, though._

“It’s some kind of hormonal thing,” Mantis says, “I know it produces triiodothyronine, which effects the metabolism. I did not know it was in the neck…”

_Interesting. What’s that bit in my spine?_

“…your spinal cord?”

_Oh, that’s important._

Mantis sighs. It’s probably about time to put Humpty-Dumpty here back together again.

Liquid interrupts him. _Say, Mantis, what does the inside of my trachea feel like?_

“Hm?”

_My esophagus, too. Maybe my blood vessels if you can work a finger in. What do they feel like?_

Blinking, Mantis swipes his index finger down Liquid’s trachea. “It’s… cool.”

_Well, my body has been approaching room temperature for… um…_

“It is already room temperature, Eli.” He keeps rubbing for a moment, then pulls his blood-tacky finger out. “Smooth,” he concludes, “but it is kind of made up of rings. Rather fleshy, and not too much give to it.”

 _Oh, I see_.

Mantis leaves Liquid’s dream without another word, and sets Liquid’s head down on a nearby crate and gathers the rest of his corpse. At least his torso is intact, if missing a head and all his limbs, which he finds on the other side of the hangar.

He doesn’t know if it’s really _necessary_ to have all his body parts in one place before untripping the ‘death’ exception, but somehow it makes him feel better. Plus this way it’s much more predictable where Liquid will ‘respawn’, alive and uninjured… in this case, sitting on the floor with his back against the crate his head had been placed on, and the rest of his body piled up against.

“Well, that was fun,” Liquid says, staring at his hands and clenching and unclenching his fingers. “I always enjoy impromptu anatomy lessons. Although I’ll admit I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to _quite_ get used to them being of my _own_ anatomy.”

“Perhaps you should try not getting dismembered by the cyborg ninja,” Mantis says dryly.

“Oh, it only hurts for a moment usually. And then I get to… end up drinking a mai tai at the final scene of End of Evangelion…?”

“When on earth did you watch End of Evangelion?”

“When I was trying to get in good with Emmerich, ugh, he made me watch the whole series with him. Don’t remind me.”

“You brought it up.”

Liquid stands. “Anyway… actually, this whole thing gave me an idea…”

Mantis barely bothers to read his mind before he says, firmly, “No.”

“No?” Liquid says, striding towards Mantis and pulling him close to him by the waist, “I haven’t even pitched it yet.”

“Yes, and I just saw in your mind—“

“But it’d be goooood,” Liquid murmurs, drawing the last word out in an obscene moan and punctuating with a nip at Mantis’ earlobe. “Wouldn’t it?”

“I am _unbelievably_ disgusted that you would even _think_ of-“

“Come on. Yes, it is a little bit on the kinky side, but—“

Mantis pulls away from him, annoyed. “I would not call _fucking your severed head_ a ‘little bit’ on the ‘kinky’ side, Eli.”

Liquid whines petulantly, then reaffirms his grip on Mantis and turns them both around, pushing Mantis back up against the crate and practically bending him backwards over it. He kisses his neck. “Don’t be such a prude, Mantis,” he whispers against his skin.

“ _Prude_ ,” Mantis repeats, in very much a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me voice.

“Yes… no need to be so uptight about the idea… so defensive…” he kisses him again, and sucks at his throat for a moment, and if this weren’t VR he might have left a hickey, “maybe you’re just afraid you might find you _like_ it.”

“I have no idea how it could even be _considered_ an attractive prospect,” Mantis says.

“Oh, but it _is_ ,” Liquid insists, pressing his body a little closer to Mantis’, “think about it - there’s no truer helplessness than being a- a lifeless _corpse_ , Mantis. Just to think of it…” Liquid bites his lip, rubbing himself against Mantis’ leg. “Oh, Mantis…”

Mantis would have liked to wonder what the hell brought this on, but the painfully obvious answer is that Liquid is just desperate for attention after Mantis being too busy with the girl and all the complications she entailed to come visit him for the better part of a week now. And, being Liquid, he often _has_ to choose the most _ridiculous_ ways to _get_ attention.

“It really is you who is more into the helplessness thing, Eli,” Mantis says, half-heartedly trying to shift out from under him.

“Don’t pretend you’re not a fan of power trips, Mantis.”

“Mmph.”

His hands leave Mantis’ hips, instead reaching up and unclasping the straps of Mantis’ gas mask, which he drops to the floor as he kisses Mantis, biting his lower lip softly. _I want to make you feel good, Mantis_ , he thinks.

_I am genuinely confused as to what part of that translated to ‘get decapitated and let him fuck my exposed esophagus’ in your mind._

_How many times does an opportunity like this come around?_ Liquid finally draws back from Mantis’ mouth, and searches his eyes. “Anything can happen to my body here,” he says breathily, “I can be torn apart all into little pieces and the only thing that would happen to _me_ is that I get a nice nap until you wake me.”

“I do not think that necrophilia logically follows.”

“Well, it’s more like somnophilia, isn’t it?”

“Either way…”

“But just _think_ about it, will you?” Liquid says, nuzzling him, still kind of humping Mantis’ leg, “Just think… maybe you’ll get lucky and come back right after it happens, and my body will still be warm… but most likely you won’t, most likely it’ll be cool and stiff—“

“Eli…”

“—so if my mouth isn’t already open, there wouldn’t be much you can do about that. Unless… unless you simply break my jaw, wrench it open until the sides of my mouth tear - it won’t matter, it won’t hurt, I won’t be able to feel it—“

“Eli.”

“—or maybe you just give up on my mouth entirely! And you simply flip my head over and- and just like a few minutes ago, when you were feeling around my neck, it’d be like that except instead of your fingers it’s, ah, you just shove your c—“

“Eli, oh my _god_. Shut _up_.”

He whimpers, going a little limp against Mantis, and Mantis takes the opportunity to stand up, forcing Liquid to take a step back. The edge of the crate was kind of digging into Mantis’ back, so…

“At this point, you are only working yourself into a frenzy, Eli,” Mantis says sternly, “over something I have no interest in engaging in.”

“B-But I…”

“You cannot even get off anymore. What is the point of this?”

“Well, I’m fairly certain _you_ can, you’re not working with the same limitations I am - nor the ones you had in life, either, you can easily put your body in whatever state you like…”

Yeah, Mantis hadn’t thought about that at all until Liquid did. In life, well, he and Liquid _did_ have sex _sometimes_ but nearly every time it was always more ‘Mantis gives Liquid a somewhat dispassionate handjob’ or ‘Mantis gives Liquid permission to grind against him while he more or less ignores him in favor of a book’. Mantis needed a lot of coaxing to actually engage in any sexual activity _himself_ , and even then a lot of the times they’d tried Mantis had managed to get nervous and psych himself out and wind up unable to achieve an erection, much to Liquid’s disappointment. (And even when he _did_ , the times when he _didn’t_ need a frustratingly long time to work up to it were few and far between, which drove Liquid nuts. He isn’t a very patient man.) So most of the time when Liquid demanded attention like this, Mantis just let himself be used as a glorified masturbatory aid…

But that wouldn’t really be an obstacle now. Mantis has already clearly demonstrated the fact that, since his body here is a mental projection, he’s free to do what he likes with it — change his appearance, for example, or hypothetically give himself a boner for Liquid to play with. It wasn’t even like he’d be completely detached from the sensations of it, either…

“Just knowing that I’ve pleasured you is enough for me,” Liquid says, then kisses him. “I don’t need to get off.”

“I still have no idea where decapitation comes into this.”

“I just think it’s kind of hot.”

Mantis briefly tries to imagine it. Unsurprisingly, it does absolutely nothing for him.

But he can see what it does for - does _to_ \- Liquid. It isn’t just the violence of it, either. Admittedly Liquid finds death and bloodshed appealing on their own, although not necessarily in a sexual way, but as he’s already said this is mostly about the complete and utter helplessness of it, the absolute inability to stop Mantis from using his corpse as some kind of sex toy. Liquid’s just got this _thing_ about helplessness that Mantis is pretty sure got it start with a somewhat misaimed coping mechanism after the events of 1991-1994.

It goes both ways, actually, with Liquid fetishizing being unable to fight someone off _and_ having someone powerless in his grasp. But Mantis was (is) uncomfortable enough with sex to begin with to participate in the latter, so he ended up taking the ‘dominant’ role and Liquid never really complained about it… besides, Mantis figured out a long time ago that in Liquid’s mind, being too dazed with pleasure to do anything besides gasp and mewl and beg for more even if he _wanted_ to was enough for him. And Mantis has kind of already done that here, plenty of times…

Although, he still doesn’t really understand why Liquid should be so insistent about this when the only remains of his sex drive are the purely psychological parts, and the ability to orgasm has literally been removed from him. He’s never satisfied, never can _be_ satisfied, and Liquid knows it. He does this sort of thing anyway.

Oh well. At least in the VR, while it’s still possible for him to get into one of his _moods_ since they did program in his suspected-but-undiagnosed bipolar disorder, those moods are never accompanied by a borderline nymphomania that Mantis had never been able to keep up with.

“So?” Liquid says expectantly, licking his lips.

“No,” Mantis says flatly.

Liquid’s let down but he steps back, dropping the conversation. He’s still a little flushed, but other than that perfectly willing to brush past it and go do something else without bringing it up again at all. Actually, Liquid thinks, it would better if they didn’t — since he got rejected, he sort of finds his behavior just now pretty embarrassing.

Mantis sighs slightly. He’s not going to argue with that. It _was_.

* * *

It’s only another few days before Mantis can return this time, so he hopes Liquid will be calmer, but when he arrives and deactivates the hostile AIs out of habit, he finds Liquid in the fitful beginnings of a dream. He must have only just been ‘killed’. And when Mantis walks into Dr. Emmerich’s lab, where Liquid was when he got ‘killed’, he groans to himself.

Liquid’s body is slumped over one of the desks, intestines hanging out in loops and puddling on the floor, dripping and oozing. Judging by the wide smear of blood on the carpet, Liquid had gotten himself disemboweled halfway across the room and had dragged himself - couldn’t walk, of course, one of his legs is hanging on by a thread - over to the nearest desk in an attempt to haul himself to his feet… and the Gray Fox AI had used the surface of the desk as an impromptu chopping block and Liquid’s head is on the floor, eyes closed, expression somewhat drawn but mostly just resigned.

“Eli, did you do this on purpose?” Mantis asks out loud, crouching by his head.

 _Do what on purpose…?_ comes Liquid’s sleepy reply.

“Get decapitated again.”

He picks up Liquid’s head, and since it had only been a few minutes since it was violently parted from his shoulders, his skin is still warm. Unbidden he recalls their conversation from last week, when Liquid had said _maybe you’ll get lucky_ with regard to getting there before his body had time to cool.

It seems Liquid is also recalling their conversation last week, because even though Mantis isn’t really _in_ his dream right now he can still sense that it’s sorting itself out to be one of those awful, generic wet dreams Liquid used to have where he’s bent over his office desk at FOXHOUND headquarters and of course a dream version of Mantis is there, too, behind him.

_Eh, Mantis…_

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mantis says, stepping into Liquid’s dream. Liquid is briefly bewildered but pleased at _two_ Mantises, and gets all _sorts_ of ideas, but Mantis makes the dream version of himself disappear in a scrape of black smoke and gives Liquid a stern look.

“Please?” Liquid says, returning his gaze with wide eyes. With the other Mantis gone his thoughts immediately jump back to the fact that Mantis is holding his severed head in the ‘waking world’ right now.

“Absolutely not.”

“At least let me see…?”

“It’s exactly the same as the last time this happened,” Mantis says, sitting down in a nearby chair with Liquid’s head still in his hands. He smooths Liquid’s brow, unintentionally opening his eyes a little, and although his skin is strangely inelastic there’s still a little too much give to it. “A very clean cut. I suppose it must have been quick.”

“Oh,” Liquid says, “actually, you know, when you get decapitated - it actually takes about a minute before you really die, so for a while you’re still completely conscious, even though you’re just a head…”

“Mm.” Mantis isn’t sure if he already knew that or not. Although he knows Liquid’s knowledge of the subject, while first-hand, didn’t start with the first time he got his head ripped off in the Shadow Moses Incident simulation.

“Shame you didn’t get here sooner… I could have sucked your cock for about 45 seconds…”

“You would not be able to create much suction with your whole throat exposed to the air,” Mantis says dryly.

“True… well, at least you got here in time for my body to still be warm!”

“I really do not care, Eli,” Mantis says, but nonetheless a little wriggle of curiosity compels him to run his thumb over Liquid’s lips before slipping it in at the corner of his blood-filled mouth, pulling his jaw down slightly. He rests the back of Liquid’s head on his lap, and sticks two of the fingers of his other hand into his mouth. “Hmm… actually, I don’t think your body temperature has dropped very much at all.”

“E-Eh? You checked? How?”

“…I put my fingers in your mouth.”

He pulls them back out before Liquid can ask to see again, but Liquid completely skips that step and goes straight to squirming in some kind of anticipation, the vague arousal already clouding the dream getting a lot thicker all of a sudden.

Mantis’ breath hitches. Intruding on Liquid’s dreams and making himself at home in his subconscious gives him a very, very direct line of communication with Liquid’s every thought and feeling. With most kinds of dreams, Mantis has already desensitized himself over the years to their associated emotions - the chaotic anger and fear of a nightmare no longer effect Mantis, for example - but Mantis had never been particularly interested in involving himself with Liquid’s more sexual dreams, so the arousal strikes him like lightning to the groin.

It isn’t fair.

Especially since with their minds so close together right now Liquid can easily pick up on Mantis’ feelings, and no he isn’t exactly doing it on _purpose_ since it’s an uncontrollable subconscious thing, but nonetheless Liquid’s dream changes before Mantis’ eyes and instead of a well-worn uninteresting fantasy now it’s a _memory_ from a long time ago: an almost-ten-years-younger Liquid lying on his back in a hotel room in Tripoli, panting, exhausted, completely naked with semen in a thick film spattered over his stomach, trembling legs spread to reveal his still-gaping hole, sloppy and dripping with lube.

 _Fuck_.

That time Mantis had fucked him a strap-on, and afterwards Liquid had been so spent and overwhelmed and thoroughly _sated_ that his weary, contented whimpering had given Mantis a very belated erection — the first time, and one of the only times, he’d ever managed to get hard without meaning to, without any direct physical stimulation.

It’s happening again now. As it turns out Mantis’ own subconscious dictates _far_ too much of what his body does here.

“You are the worst,” Mantis says to Liquid’s severed head in his lap.

“I remember this,” Liquid murmurs breathlessly, “I was too tired to really do anything, and you needed some way to make your boner go away… so I just went limp, and let you use me as you liked…”

“Ah, I…”

“I couldn’t have gotten off on it, anyway, but… it was good… wasn’t it?”

Mantis’ hands on either side of Liquid’s head tighten. Oh, no… is he really about to let Liquid talk him into this?

“Go on, go on,” Liquid says sweetly, “I only ask that you let me watch…”

He wants to refuse but the throbbing heat in Mantis’ groin demands that he go through with it. And Liquid’s so worked up already - Mantis could just as easily excuse this with a desire to not disappoint Liquid. Sighing shakily, Mantis once again forces Liquid’s dream to shift so that he’s essentially looking through Mantis’ eyes.

The odd disorientation of the not-double double vision actually works in his favor now. He feels a little like he’s intoxicated, and somehow it relaxes him.

 _I’ve always been told I have a pretty mouth_ , Liquid says as Mantis brushes a thumb over his lips again.

“Mhm.”

_Well, it’s all yours now… nice and soft and hot in there, and all wet with blood. But I can hardly lower my jaw for you, so I suppose avoiding my teeth will be entirely on you._

Teeth, teeth… Mantis doesn’t care about teeth. Liquid tended to be rather passive with oral sex, so the times they had tried it Mantis had always scraped himself on accident whenever he changed his angle even slightly, and the handful of times Liquid had tried to be a little more assertive about it he’d just been clumsy and actually bit Mantis unintentionally. But really, the point here is that sticking his dick into the mouth of Liquid’s slack-jawed severed head is _really_ not going to be any different from receiving oral sex from a perfectly alive Liquid who just sat there with his mouth wide open, waiting for Mantis to thrust in. Which is ludicrous.

_I… I’m actually kind of offended you think that, Mantis…_

Mantis lets him be offended. Besides, sticking his dick _anywhere_ isn’t going to accomplish much if he’s only half-hard at best. Slowly, almost absent-mindedly, he pushes Liquid’s head up against the bulge in the front of his pants and grinds against his cheek, sinking down in his chair slightly.

It feels… good. He’s already noted that the texture of Liquid’s flesh was strange now that blood no longer flowed in it, but the hard bone of his skull provides a satisfactory amount of friction. He hears Liquid let out some kind of purring moan that, since it’s really only a thought, might be better transcribed as “!!!!!!~! ♥︎”

 _Is that good, Mantis?_ he demands in elation, _does that feel good? Do you like it?_

“Y…Yes,” Mantis chokes out.

_Good… good, keep going. Keep going until you get it nice and hard for me, Mantis._

He angles his hips up, the tip of the tent of his pants pressing into Liquid’s eye socket, compressing his eyeball. It’s firm, but gives easily against Mantis’ erection, and Mantis gasps out loud. This is insane. Pleasurable, but insane.

 _Are you just going to keep your wonderful cock trapped in your pants forever?_ Liquid teases.

Mantis shakes his head, slumping in his chair as he continues humping Liquid’s head, his hands shaking where they’re clawing into his jaw and his hair. He feels like there’s a fire under his skin and his own thoughts are unsettlingly jumbled. But Liquid talks him through it.

_Go ahead, undo your pants for me. I like what I see so far, but I want to see more… don’t you, Mantis? Won’t it feel even better?_

Mantis sits up, sets Liquid’s head on the chair between his legs - one of his already-flat eyes is displaced, iris barely visible under his eyelid while the other eye just stares vacantly ahead of him - and unzips his fly with trembling fingers. It occurs to him now that, despite the fact that Liquid is the one getting entirely used in this situation, Mantis is the one who really feels helpless to resist him.

Huh. Turns out Liquid got Mantis to take the ‘submissive’ role after all.

But he can’t find it in himself to protest against that, not when he feels the warm fuzziness of affection coming from Liquid and could hear his murmured praises, whispering to him in the dream about what a nice cock he has, how he wants it all for himself, and Mantis should just relax, not worry about anything, and by all means use Liquid’s corpse as a way to get himself off. It’s only natural, after all, none of this is Mantis’ fault but how _nice_ it is of him to let Liquid convince him to do this, let Liquid take care of his needs even in death.

Mantis pulls Liquid’s jaw down and easily fits his cock in between his lips. His body’s starting to cool slightly - it’s not quite as hot as it was when he slipped his fingers in, although it’s still very wet in there and Liquid’s tongue is soft. Mantis isn’t sure he likes this, though. Being dead and all, there’s no movement whatsoever except the uneven jerks of Mantis’ hands forcing the head down his dick. It’s probably pretty similar to fucking a sack of meat with hard chips of teeth lining it.

 _But look at the way it disappears into my mouth_ , Liquid says excitedly, _not a single noise of protest as you shove it down my throat. Finally, I can take it down to the base without any trouble…_

“This is… it’s not…”

_Not that great, hmm?_

“I’m… my apologies, Eli…”

_No, it’s perfectly alright, Mantis. It’s just a little warm and wet - not terribly exciting - and my teeth must be bothering you. Try something else. Oh, I know! You certainly seemed to like grinding against my eyeball earlier…_

Mantis draws out of his mouth and readjusts his position in the chair again, this time driving his erection up against the same eye socket he’d been humping earlier, panting now. Liquid’s eye doesn’t quite _give_ this time - it just pops out of the way of the head of Mantis’ dick, which plunges into the now-empty eye socket as the dislocated, slightly deflated-looking eyeball dangles morosely by its optic nerve.

 _There you go_ , Liquid coos, _do you like that, Mantis?_

“Oh— this is- strange—“

_But does it feel nice? I don’t want to hear anything except that I’m making you feel good right now…_

“I… ahh…”

_Nothing to worry about… you can do whatever you like, and then when you wake me up it’ll be as if nothing had happened at all. Just the shared memory of it… nothing is off-limits, Mantis! And just look at the way your beautiful prick fits so perfectly into my eye socket!_

The paper-thin bone at the bottom and sides of his eye socket splinters and caves under his shallow thrusts. Mantis squirms despite himself. The air of the room is somewhat cool, so the wetness of the blood coating his dick is a sort of sharp, almost painful sensation.

 _Oh, stop complaining_ , Liquid scolds, _you can switch holes if you want._

“Don’t… don’t use that tone of voice with me,” Mantis mutters.

 _Hmm? What’s the matter? Just look at you, so easily talked into doing such a strange thing… I’m sure you can stand me pushing you around just a_ little _, Mantis._

Mantis groans, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. Immediately Liquid throws a fit.

_I want to see what you’re doing to my head, Mantis!!_

“Too bad.”

_No— you’re going to watch yourself fuck my decapitated head and you’re going to like it. Go on, open your eyes and look down again, Mantis. Go on!_

He’s so demanding that Mantis feels he has little choice but to obey him, his stomach twisting weirdly as he does so. He looks back down at where Liquid’s head is impaled on Mantis’ cock by the eye socket, and Liquid makes that little moaning purr again.

 _Good_ , he says, _very good, Mantis. How obedient of you…_

Mantis pulls the head up and off of him, a bit of blood oozing out to spatter on his thighs and the chair and one of Liquid’s extraocular muscles flops out after his dick. Liquid’s eye is completely ruined, and Mantis considers repeating the whole process with his other eye but isn’t sure if that’s really going to do anything for him besides introduce a pleasing sense of symmetry to Liquid’s face. (Although Liquid _does_ have a symmetrical face apart from his scars - he’s just handsome like that.)

Deciding it doesn’t matter, Mantis flips Liquid’s head over and stares for a moment at the blood-soaked cross-section of his neck. There’s an oft-detested animal part of him that’s taking up an uncomfortable amount of his thoughts right now that hyperfocuses on the two holes, indecisive about which one to stuff his cock into.

He traces a finger over the esophagus. _Do you want to?_ Liquid says, _it won’t be too different from a normal throatfucking, but this time it’ll be from the opposite end. All the fleshy bleeding parts of my neck will press against your hips, and it’ll stretch so nicely around your cock…_

His fingers drift up to the trachea. _Would you like that better?_ Liquid asks, _it might be a tighter fit, I think, but that should feel so much more wonderful… it may make the esophagus look boring in comparison…_

“Gh…”

_Which will it be, Mantis?_

Mantis can’t think clearly enough to come to any kind of rational decision, so he simply shoves Liquid’s head down neck-first on his crotch and hopes his cock slips into one of the two on its own. Instead he winces and has to pull back quickly — he pressed against Liquid’s trachea, from the feel of it, hard, but couldn’t quite make it in.

 _Ah, I see_ , Liquid says thoughtfully, _you’re simply too big to get it in there without some kind of… lubrication, I suppose. And all the blood in my head has already drained or congealed by now, that’s not very helpful…_

Mantis’ eyes flick up to the rest of Liquid’s body, still slumped over the desk a few feet in front of him. Liquid makes a small noise of approval. Mantis is more than a little put off by the idea Liquid had, looking at his own disemboweled corpse.

 _It’s alright, Mantis_ , Liquid says gently, _just do as I say and don’t overthink things…_

“Ah… fine.”

_Good… put my head down and go over to me. Go ahead…_

Placing Liquid’s head on the desk next to him, Mantis stands up with weak knees and walks over to the rest of Liquid’s corpse.

 _Make sure you get a firm hold of me_ , Liquid instructs.

His skin is cool, but the flesh underneath is warm. It’s like when someone has been standing outside in the cold for a while.

_Now… look down at that big, gaping wound across my front. There… look at my intestines, just out there in the open like that. Looks inviting, doesn’t it?_

“No,” Mantis says.

_No? Well… I’m sure they’re very warm… and slippery. Now, Mantis, I want you to fuck me right where Gray Fox sliced me open - right in my guts._

“…”

_Go on._

He might as well. He has to crouch a little to get the right angle, and he knows he won’t be able to hold this position for long, but he doesn’t have to. He just has to clutch at Liquid’s body and drive his cock up into his stomach, letting the wet, smooth coils of intestine shift and bounce around his dick and press against his stomach, hips, and thighs, getting blood all over his front.

_Mmm… not a great angle for me, Mantis, I can barely see what you’re doing…_

He pushes Liquid’s body back a little, staring down at where his cock is buried in his guts. He hears Liquid moan, feels a little surge of dizzy foreign pleasure. Or maybe it isn’t foreign. Maybe his ‘body’ is tired of him switching holes or positions and just wants to rut into something until he reaches completion.

_Ah, is that so? Well, you can keep going with my body if you like, or you can go back to my head. Your choice._

Mantis is going to collapse if he keeps this up any longer, so he pulls out - a little more of Liquid’s intestines slip out of his body cavity, and the body itself falls ungracefully off the desk and onto the floor - and slumps backwards into the chair again, breathing hard.

“Eli… this is…”

_But it feels good, doesn’t it?_

“Yes…”

_That’s all I want from you, Mantis._

Mantis nods tiredly, and grabs Liquid’s head again. His cock is aching.

Either blood makes for terrible lube or there isn’t enough of it on him, because he still can’t quite get it in, but out of patience now he simply shoves his fingers down Liquid’s trachea and _pulls_ , and it splits messily with a soft, wet tearing sound. It fits more easily on his dick after that, and—-

God, it’s _tight_.

Tight enough that it wrenches a pathetic moan out of him, and he goes almost completely limp in his chair, still keeping his eyes determinedly fixed on where he’s dragging Liquid’s throat down his cock by handfuls of pretty hair. He can feel Liquid’s excitement over in the dream, although he doesn’t really need to because it’s astoundingly obvious just from the way he whispers rapidly to Mantis, praising and reassuring him, telling him there’s nothing wrong with indulging himself like this, and thanking him for using Liquid to do so.

Mantis is barely listening. He’s speaking too fast, using too many words — Mantis' head is spinning and all he can do is rut into Liquid’s ripped trachea. It’s smooth and sort of ribbed, and compresses his dick like a vice, and with every thrust the tip of his cock rams into Liquid’s soft palate.

The thought occurs to him that someone could make a best-selling sex toy along this principle, and he’s frankly disgusted by it.

Liquid laughs. _They’d have to hide the fact that it’s inspired by fucking someone’s trachea, from the neck. I’m not sure that would sell well._

Mantis wants to make a bitter comment about how most people wouldn’t really care about the origins of whatever it is they’re using to succumb to their selfish, animalistic desires, but he really can’t justify that to himself. He knows he can be a hypocrite sometimes but that’s just crossing the line.

Besides, any time he opens his mouth now all that comes out a breathy little groan. He thinks he might be getting overstimulated.

 _Close, eh?_ Liquid says, _don’t fight it, Mantis. Everything’s alright._

“Aah… gh… hh…”

_Don’t hold back… don’t hold back, Mantis. I want you to finish inside me- fill my mouth up with your seed until it’s dripping out of my lips— I want every drop, Mantis!_

This is insane. This is absolutely insane. Mantis can feel an orgasm building and he wonders once again just why the hell he’d let Liquid talk him into this.

_Mantis… Mantis, I want you to say my name when you orgasm—-_

He nods. He’s so dazed and light-headed right now, and it’s almost like his hips are moving of their own accord.

“Ah- aah— agh— E-Eli…!!”

Mantis can’t help but shut his eyes as his climax tears through him, but Liquid doesn’t scold him for it this time, instead laughing triumphantly. Mantis gets smothered in affection again as he comes down off his orgasm, shivering, weakly tugging Liquid’s head off his softening cock.

 _Did you like that, Mantis?_ Liquid breathes.

“Yes… yes, Eli…”

_It felt good?_

“Yes…”

_Ah… I’m glad. But I suppose you can wake me up now, then…_

Mantis nods. In a minute. After he catches his breath.

_Oh, but…_

“Hm?”

_Don’t clean me up when you do… when I get up, I want to still be able to taste you. Can you do that for me?_

“Yes, Eli,” Mantis rasps meekly.

He tests the steadiness of his code manipulation by psychically cleaning all the blood off himself, then tucks his dick back into his pants and fixes himself up, and glances over at Liquid’s body again. It’s a mess. His head in particular is a mess. Blood all over his face, and just like he requested there’s a bit of semen leaking out of his parted lips.

One soft reset later, Liquid pushes himself up off the floor in front of Mantis, coughing and sniffling, and holds his hands up to his mouth and nose.

“O-Oh _god_ , Mantis,” he whimpers, “it’s in my sinuses.”

“You really should have seen that coming,” Mantis replies, and any bite he intended behind the statement is lost somewhere in the fact that he’s honestly pretty sleepy right now… for reasons that are entirely beyond him. Never before has this ‘body’ of his had need for rest, so never before had he ever cared to find out if sleeping here was something he could actually do.

Liquid coughs again, and wipes his face with the back of his hand. There’s blood all over his lips and chin, and the edges of his nostrils, and caked to his face around the eye Mantis ruined, although naturally the eye itself is perfectly fine down - he’s also got blood all around his neck and all down his front. In short, he’s a _mess_.

“Tired now?” he says, suddenly noticing the way Mantis is sort of lolling in his chair.

“Mm… perhaps…”

He approaches Mantis, and Mantis holds up a hand. “Do not touch me until you have cleaned yourself up.”

Liquid shrugs. “I’ll be right back, then.” He heads off to the bathroom.

By the time he returns to Emmerich’s lab, Mantis has already nodded off, still sitting in the same chair.

* * *

When Mantis wakes up again he finds that Liquid had carried him off to bed, and had remained there snuggled up to next to him, his mind humming with contentment and not much else, really. Spacing out instead of sleeping. Mantis blinks (Liquid took off his mask, because of course he did) and then sits up abruptly, briefly panicking that the Patriots had called him back while he was asleep and he hadn’t responded because he _was_ asleep. Liquid jolts back to his senses as Mantis does so.

“What’s wrong??”

“I— oh. Nothing.” At least, reaching out across to network to his vague connection with the girl, Mantis finds no indication that anyone’s bothered her today. “I just thought for a moment… nevermind.”

“Everything’s fine?”

“Yes.”

Liquid pulls him back down again, nuzzling him and then kissing him. His lips still taste a little of blood, with some extra note of bitterness. “Well, that’s good. I’d rather you didn’t wake up, though… you’re cute when you’re sleeping…”

“Nn.”

“Er… Mantis, you…”

“Hmm?”

“You… _did_ like what… we did earlier, didn’t you? You weren’t just saying you did?”

Mantis frowns, but nods. “It was very strange,” he says, “but… at least on a physical level, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. And you were so eager to please, too, and I will admit I did somehow appreciate the way you… talked me through it… took the entire responsibility for it...”

“Mmmm.” Liquid nuzzles him again. Somehow, Mantis thinks, the feeling of Liquid’s heart beating where Mantis’ arm is trapped between his own side and Liquid’s chest is a very comforting one. “I _was_ only trying to please you - to make you feel good… I enjoy doing that.”

“I know, Eli, I know.”

“And honestly that was the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to me. Shame I couldn’t get off on it, but really I don’t need to. As long as you did…”

“How generous of you.”

“I know how much you dislike selfishness.”

There’s only silence for a moment, and then Liquid sits up and stares down at Mantis, his expression inscrutable. Mantis is feeling too lazy right now to bother reading his mind, so he waits for him to speak instead.

“Mantis,” he says at length, “when you come to see me, are you happy?”

The question makes Mantis’ breath catch in his throat.

“What?” he chokes out, eyes wide.

“Are you happy when you come see me here? Do I make you happy, Mantis? I try my best to, but…”

“What… what brought this on, Eli?”

Liquid glances away. “Nothing, really,” he says, “I only… well, I still remember what you said when you died. ‘Humans weren’t designed to bring each other happiness.’”

“Oh.”

Again, only silence for a time. Then Mantis finally answers him.

“I was thinking of you when I said that,” he admits, “but I was referring to myself.”

“Eh?”

“I… have always been happy with you, Eli. But I fear I have never been able to make _you_ happy - I could never truly give you what you wanted, whether it was sex or revenge or consistent affection and attention. That, of all things, was what I regretted as I lay dying. I only thought…”

“You bring me happiness, Mantis.”

“…”

“A lot of it. I’m very happy with you.” He touches Mantis’ face, softly running his fingers over his scars. “Surely you know that?”

“…emotions are a little harder to gauge than simple thoughts or memories.”

“I think you’re just insecure.”

Mantis doesn’t reply. He’s probably right. Maybe he just is.

Liquid leans down and kisses him again. “I don’t care what humans were or weren’t designed to do,” he whispers against his lips, “you and I were both designed differently, either by man or by nature… so it doesn’t matter. We aren’t the same as all the others.”

“Mm.”

“And that’s more literally true right now, anyway. So I don’t think it’s such a stretch that you make me so happy, Mantis.”

“I… I am glad I do, Eli.”

**Author's Note:**

> In case you didn't get it, "When you come to see me, are you happy?" is something the AI Liquid asks Mantis in _Tanabata_.
> 
> (any and all comments will be forewarded to aireyv! i will either copy/paste their reply to me or they will reply on their own account! have a nice day!!! if you have any questions, just ask!!!!)


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